Stellaris News

written by Eladrin

Hello again!

This week we’re going to look at some more things that are going into the upcoming Stellaris 3.5 “Fornax” release.

[h2]Megastructures in the Outliner[/h2]

One of the things going into Fornax is something we’ve wanted for a very long time on PC - a Megastructure section in the Outliner.



As shown here, the Megastructures section will list all megastructures within your territory, including ruined ones as well as Gateway Sites (but not completed gateways, as that would be too much clutter).

Never again will you lose track of where you left that Gateway Site or Ruined Sentry Array!

[h2]Accessibility Improvements[/h2]

We talked about some accessibility improvement goals before the summer, and some of them are going into Fornax.



When enabled, Mouse Side Button Mode allows Mouse 4 and Mouse 5 to toggle pause state and galactic/system views.

Page Up and Page Down will also now adjust the camera zoom level.

Other accessibility improvement projects are ongoing for future updates. I hope to have text to speech available in an Open Beta later on in the year for the 3.6 “Orion” update.

[h2]Golden Tiyanki Status[/h2]

The Caravansary Caravan Coalition will now reward their most loyal patrons with Golden Tiyanki status. Those who have purchased a sufficient number of Reliquaries will now be granted the honor of being able to purchase as many as they like, directly for credits, with no more cooldowns for their best customers.



Good luck, the Galatron is waiting!

(This should make a couple of related achievements significantly less painful to acquire. They do eventually get pretty expensive, however.)

[h2]More Achievements[/h2]

Continuing from last week, here are the rest of the new Species Pack achievements we're planning for Fornax.

Aquatics:


Holy Water - Drench a Fallen Empire’s holy world.


There Be Dragons - Have at least 13 dragons you own in your capital system.

Necroids:


With Great Power - As a Necrophage, do not invade any pre-ftl civilisations until you defeat the crisis OR have at least 10 observation stations around pre-ftl worlds.


Recent History - As a Memorialist empire, have Galactic Memorials on five tomb worlds that did not start the game as tomb worlds.

Lithoids:


Room for Desert - Consume another empire’s desert homeworld.


Can You Smell What the Lithoids are Cooking? - As a Lithoid empire, keep another Lithoid pop as Livestock or Process them.

Plantoids:


Growing Like Weeds - As a budding species that does not have the Clone Army origin, achieve a base organic pop assembly of at least 10/month on your capital.


Tend the Garden - Become the custodian of Wenkwort Artem, designating it a resort world with a Ranger Lodge and all original blockers present.

Humanoids:


Directive 67 - As a Clone Soldier empire, denounce a Spiritualist fallen empire as a crisis in the Galactic Community then destroy them, without blowing up their final planet.
(We're so mean to the Spiritualist Fallen Empire!)


Destroy the People of Earth! - As the Commonwealth of Man, destroy the United Nations of Earth with your ruler being a human with a symbiotic brainslug, without blowing up their final planet.

We also have one more being added to Synthetic Dawn:


Machine Supremacy - Win the game as a machine uprising.

Now I’ll turn it over to Iggy for an update on Relics.

[h2]Relic Updates[/h2]

Hello everyone! I am Iggy and I am back to show you the fruit of our collaboration from back earlier in the summer. Firstly we reviewed some of the feedback about the untouched relics so please enjoy even more relics with enhanced flavor and fewer pain points.



The Khan’s Throne now grants you access to the Satrapy Subject Preset letting you extort fleet capacity from your subject.

Also the Defragmentor will now have a usage for non-robot empires granting 10% energy upkeep reduction to all jobs buildings and districts.



And finally the Head of Zarqlan now has the spiritualist ethics attraction locked to the active, and the size of the fleet increases with activation, up to a max after 5 uses. Also due to popular demand the head will now spawn for the AI instead of the player 25% of the time and the AI will colonize holy worlds when they possess the relic.

Further Changes to Already Balanced Relics:

• The Psionic Archive now allows Gestalt Empires to find Psionic Theory which in turn will grant them access to Zro Mining.
  
• The Brood Queen will now grant a stacking empire modifier to swarm type weapons (Missiles and Strike Craft) for each use and will also spawn the Carrier variant on use.
  
• The Pox Sample will increase the likelihood that you find Biological Technologies
  
• The Omnicodex now gives +25 relation with non robot empires if you are a robot one.
  
• The Reality Perforator active modifiers now last 2-5 years instead of 1-5 years

For the rest of the changes please see Dev Diary #259.

[h2]Next Week and PDXCon[/h2]

Next week is PDXCon at Münchenbryggeriet here in Stockholm, but we’ll still have a dev diary taking a peek at some of the content coming out with Fornax. If you come visit us at the convention, we’ll have Fornax up and running, a Stellaris Q&A Panel where we'll be taking questions from the audience, and I’m planning on holding a small workshop where we’ll reveal how our summer experiments have gone.

There are still a few tickets left if you're in the area.

See you next week!

written by Eladrin

Hi everyone, I hope you’ve had a wonderful summer.

Today we’ll start going into some of the things planned for the upcoming Stellaris 3.5 “Fornax” update.

[h2]New Difficulty Settings[/h2]

With the improvements that have been made to the AI over the past few updates, we’ve noticed that new players are finding things a bit more challenging and there have been some requests for an easier difficulty setting. As such, we’re adding a Civilian difficulty setting, and making Cadet the default difficulty.

Civilian difficulty further increases the bonuses players receive in Cadet difficulty, with an additional bonus towards completing First Contact.



Now, we’re aware that most of you that read these dev diaries are looking for a greater challenge rather than the opposite, but we have some things for you as well.

Two new settings are being added that allow you to better customize the difficulty of your game.

Rather than being a simple toggle, Scaling Difficulty can now be set to Off, Mid Game, or Late Game - if set to Mid Game, AI bonuses will scale from zero to the selected difficulty by the Mid-Game Start Year. Late Game will provide the current behavior of scaling to the selected difficulty by the End-Game Start Year.



Difficulty Adjusted AI Modifiers is a new toggle that can dramatically increase the strength of the AI on higher difficulty levels as the game progresses. If enabled, the AI bonuses apply to all other modifiers the AI accumulates.

As an example, the Geothermal Fracking technology grants +20% Minerals from Miners. On Grand Admiral difficulty with this setting enabled, this technology would instead grant AI empires a 40% bonus.



Fornax will also bring one other tiny little addition to the galaxy generation settings for players looking for an extra challenge.



The Crisis Type setting will now have an option for All, which will spawn every crisis sequentially, with each subsequent crisis being stronger than the previous. The galaxy is counting on you. No pressure.

[h2]Species Pack Achievements[/h2]

Stellaris achievements have always been a bit tongue in cheek and enjoyable to make, if not always enjoyable to complete. (I’m looking at you, Galatron achievements!)

We’ve submitted to the demands of our artists, and will be adding three achievements to each species pack that has previously been released.

While Stellaris achievements have traditionally always been careful to not require “cross-dlc”, we didn’t enforce that restriction to some of these since we felt that if you have all of the Species Packs you probably have everything else already.

Here’s one example from each.

Aquatics:
Fishing for Trouble - As an angler empire, provoke a Fallen Empire into declaring war on you and win.

Necroids:

There’s a Zombie on my Lawn - As a Necroid empire, eradicate a Plantoid empire, or vice-versa, without blowing up their final planet.

Lithoids:

Rock Beats Paper - As a Lithoid empire, show the Galactic Community exactly what you think of that strongly worded letter.

Humanoids:

Strange Mood - As a Master Crafter empire, fully construct a megastructure while you have a Covenant with a Shroud entity.

Plantoids:

DIY - As an Idyllic Bloom empire, convert the junk worlds of the Ketling Star Pack into Gaia Worlds.

[h2]Next Week[/h2]

Next week I'll spoil more of the achievements, and go into some quality of life changes. Iggy will also give a compiled update on relic changes based on your feedback.



We'll be a bit slow with replies to this dev diary as we're currently at a staff conference. We'll catch up as we can.

See you next week!

PDXCON2022 returns to Stockholm this September! Join us on the road to PDXCON2022 with another Grand Campaign!

Watch our developers as they play through a customized game of Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and Stellaris and follow laws passed by our Community-led Senate. Following the great tradition laid down last year for PDXCON, there may be familiar faces, returning arch-rivals, and maybe some new friends!



[h3]What is a Grand Campaign?[/h3]

The story of a Grand Campaign is written in the senate, where Community-formed and led parties propose and vote on laws, that our developers have to follow on stream. This Grand Campaign spans the timeframe of four of our games, spanning several thousand years of alt-human history. Starting in the Crusader Kings era, all the way to Stellaris. In between games, we will transfer elements of one era to the next, so that the entire game is played in the same universe. This year, we've teamed up with some of your favorite modders, to make it that much more entertaining!

[h3]How can I get involved?[/h3]

Join the Senate on discord! Parties on discord are still accepting newcomers, and while the bills have been passed for Crusader Kings, there are still around a thousand years of history, and ~40 hours of streams that your laws can directly affect! There will also be quick votes held on discord for in-game events deemed appropriate to pass to the senate by our Game Masters.

[h3]Where can I watch?[/h3]

Join us on twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive, starting at 1000 AM CEST (0800 UTC)!

[h3]What is PDXCON?[/h3]

PDXCON2022 is an opportunity to meet some of your favorite developers, live in person at our annual Paradox Convention! Join a massive board game session, attend Paradox games’ orchestra & play our games (potentially including some cool new unreleased content)! Get the tickets while supplies last!




See you there!

written by Alfray_Stryke

Hey folks, and I hope everyone is having a fantastic summer/winter break (depending on your hemisphere). I’ve found some time between my other summer experiments and the work we’re doing for 3.5 “Fornax” to dive into the feedback/suggestions lists. Since Eladrin is still away, you’re getting another sneak preview of what I’ve been working on.

One of the frequent requests from the Unity rework that was part of the 3.3 “Libra” patch earlier this year was for us to return Culture Workers to the game. Currently, they exist only as jobs provided by some event buildings, but many in the Community felt we removed some flavor/roleplay aspect when we removed them.

Over summer, I’ve been experimenting with potentially adding them back in. For context, in the current version of the game Culture Workers are a Specialist job that belongs to their own economic category, produce 3 Unity and 3 Society Research with an upkeep of 2 Consumer Goods.

Let’s have a look at an Autochthon Monument constructed by the UNE shortly after the start of the game.

Showing the Culture Workers with some unusual modifiers

To start with, the monument is retaining the Unity from Jobs modifier and the passive Unity production per Ascension Perk, but additionally provides 2/4/6 Culture Worker jobs per tier of the monument. The same applies to the Corporate version of the monument.

The sharp-eyed might notice that there’s some odd modifiers being given: Worker Happiness? Pop Upkeep Reduction? What, might you ask, has happened?

In this experiment, we’re looking at Culture Workers having an output that depends on the Ethics of your empire. After all, what influences your culture the most if not your ethics?

These are the ethics-based modifiers we’re currently testing and whether their effects are Empire-wide or only affecting the planet that the building has been constructed on:

• Materialist: +2 Amenities (Planet)
  
• Spiritualist: -2.5% Amenity Usage (Planet)
  
• Militarist: +1 Naval Capacity (Empire)
  
• Pacifist: -2.5% Crime (Planet)
  
• Egalitarian: +2.5% Worker Happiness (Planet)
  
• Authoritarian: +5 Ruler Political Power (Planet)
  
• Xenophobe: +3 Edict Fund (Empire)
  
• Xenophile: -2.5% Pop Upkeep (Planet)

These modifiers are provided by both Culture Workers and Death Chroniclers (as their job-swap with the Memorialist civic) and are doubled in the case of Fanatic ethics. They are intended to be a small buff/addition to the job, with the Unity production from both the jobs and the building being the primary draw.

Additionally, Culture Workers/Death Chroniclers now belong in the Administrator category, in the Culture Worker sub-category meaning they’ll benefit from multiplicative bonuses to Administrator output (such as those provided by the Unification or Ecclesiastical planetary designations). They produce a base of 4 Unity and +10% Government Ethics Attraction (+2.5% Stability for Death Chroniclers) with 3 Consumer Goods upkeep.

There’s also been some discussion around having Resort Worlds add Culture Workers, and if I find time I’ll be looking into that as well.

To ensure that hive-minds and machine intelligences don’t feel left out, Sensorium/Simulation Sites now provide 2/4/6 Evaluator jobs per tier of the building. These now provide 4 Unity and 3 Amenities in exchange for an upkeep of 2 Energy.

A hive-mind sensorium site providing 2 evaluator jobs.

Chronicle Drones provide the same Unity and Amenities output but give an additional +2.5% Stability in exchange for slightly higher upkeep (and that upkeep being based off of the upkeep cost of the pop working the job). Like their individualist equivalents, these jobs both now belong to the Evaluator sub-category of the Administrators jobs.

I’m not sure if we’ll have another surprise dev diary over summer, but our normal schedule should resume once Eladrin’s back and we’ll start delving into 3.5. Regardless I’ll be keeping a close eye on this thread for your thoughts, suggestions and any feedback.

Stellaris was a beefy space 4X back in 2016, but since then it's only kept growing, like a giant cosmic monster that wants to consume every sci-fi trope imaginable. After years of DLC offerings—split into full-blown expansions, story packs and species packs—there's now a big mess of new mechanics, events and aliens to untangle. The good news is that pretty much all of it is worth getting (but bad news for your bank account). Not all DLC is created equal, however, and what you're going to get the most out of will also depend on your playstyle—what kind of space empire do you want to build?..
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